I’d like to introduce a project I am now pursuing full-time: Open North, a Canadian non-profit whose mission is to build online tools for a better democracy. Open North believes good governance requires a strong democracy and a strong democracy requires an engaged citizenry. We believe in using the Internet to provide a platform for citizens to connect with each other and their elected officials, to open the door to new models of consultation, and to help governments involve citizens in decision-making. (I’m sure most everyone on this list is familiar with these ideas.)
Jonathan Brun of Montreal Ouvert and Bernard Rudny of Apathy is Boring are my co-founders in this initiative. You may have already heard of some of our projects (
http://opennorth.ca/work/), such as the interactive budget app built for the Montreal borough of Plateau Mont-Royal.
Many of you are probably familiar with Visible Government, a non-profit from 2009 with similar goals. The major difference would be one of focus. Open North concentrates almost exclusively on building tools to improve government transparency and to support citizen participation in government.
If you would like to follow Open North’s development, I invite you to sign-up to our newsletter from our homepage. I will from time-to-time announce new projects of interest to this list, as well.
http://opennorth.cahttp://nordouvert.caThanks,
James
Locked
